1. Go to page 77 (or 7) of your current ms.2. Go to line 73. Copy down the next 7 lines – sentences or paragraphs – and post them as they’re written.4. Tag 7 other authors. If you would like to do this meme, consider yourself tagged!

I have no stories with a page 77 just now, but three with a page 7:

Brad turned away, returning to the living room. He confirmed with a glance that Nate had indeed relocked and chained the door after Brad stepped inside, and then walked over to the desk to find the TV remote. Sure enough it was there, on the far side of the laptop.

The file on screen was all text, widely spaced, impossible not to read at a glance. In the two weeks since Brad last had an email from him--since the baby had been born--Nate's book had gotten up to the firefight in Nasiriyah. The top page on the stack beside the computer was a sketched map of their route.

Brad looked up, and the picture on the TV was of the Afghan hills.

The wolves stood obediently shoulder to shoulder, heads together, and Bo came to a solemn halt before them and touched noses with both of them at once, drawing both wolves and their brothers into her pack-sense as a single unit. Nate heard--and felt--the quiet surprise of the rest of Bravo Two at the ease with which she absorbed the new wolves into the pack-sense. Even Alpha's lieutenant looked reluctantly impressed.

Sergeant Patrick was grinning, and Rudy was laughing, pumping his fist in delight. Hurricane and Sandy bowed together, and Bo cheerfully washed both their faces and then led them off to meet the younger wolves. Nate was grinning, too, reaching out a hand to shake with each of his new NCOs even as the feeling of them spread through the pack-sense. Patrick was quiet and steady, content to let Reyes draw everyone's attention but confident in his own authority.

He knew what Jenny liked to eat, which books were her favorites, what brand of shampoo to buy, what size shoes. And now she was here and he realized that he should have been more worried about knowing how to inhale and exhale and not just freeze up completely because she was here, because she needed him.

Every time he thought he'd pulled himself together he remembered the look on Lewis's face, heard him saying all over again Go away, I don't want to see you. Here they were again, or here they were about to be; James kept bracing for the impact, the sickeningly familiar moment when another set of lies of omission came crashing down, and Lewis washed his hands of him. Of them, now, because James couldn't only take himself into account. He had to think of Jenny, and Jenny's Uncle Robbie.

James laughed a little at that, unable to control himself, though the ache in his chest only intensified.

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It's the single huuuuuge story that stretches from the platoon coming together in training in the fall of 2002, through Iraq and afterward. Right now I'm on the third scene, so the platoon consists of Nate, Pappy, Rudy, and about three junior enlisted guys (plus respective wolves, of course). :)